#OWS: With all the sex assaults, why don’t the protesters just leave?

With an increasing number of stories about rapes and other sexual assaults at the Occupy encampments, more and more conservatives are saying that it’s time for the mayors of any given city to shut the Occupiers down. Example:

It’s time for New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg to pull the plug on the dangerous circus in crime zone Zuccotti Park.

People have the right to protest, to assemble peaceably, to raise their voices and petition their government. They do not have the right to break the law. And Mayor Bloomberg has the duty to uphold the law.

I disagree. Certainly, the respective mayors should have their police do what police are supposed to do, which is to arrest malfeasors. (For an entirely different take on police responsibilities, versus those of other City employees, you have to check out the latest about Oakland Mayor Jean Quan. If I had to read the crystal ball, I’d guess that, absent some serious ballot box corruption, Quan won’t be getting reelected any time soon.)

The rising number of sex crimes, however, is no reason to shut down the protests. Why? Because protesters who don’t like the neighborhood can leave. The only thing keeping them there is their own desire. They moved into town, any town, a month ago (more or less) and they can move out again. If they want to live in a violent, crime-ridden slum, let them. They are not a forcibly trapped population. If they were, common humanity might demand that we act for their own good. These are volunteer victims. Leave ’em alone. I like it that, smack dab in the middle of America’s most liberal cities, residents get to see a living, breathing reminder of Leftist society in action.

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That was my reaction, too. I listened to the tearful testimony of the girl that says she was raped at the OWS event in Baltimore and felt truly conflicting emotions of empathy for the girl on one hand and another that asked, “what did you expect?”.

I have a rule: never feel sorry for people who have it in their own power to protect themselves and avoid harm but don’t (a rule that includes extreme sports enthusiasts and pacifists…and I include myself as an extreme sports enthusiast). The girl’s youth and naivete mitigate a bit in her favor, but only a very little bit. Presumably, she is a little wiser to the world, now.

MacG

Me: “OW! that potato is HOT!” Mom:”What’d you expect? It just came out of the refrigerator”.

Danny that girl was was burned so to speak not because the potato was hot but that her mentors taught her that if you are nice that no one will hurt you. Surely the OWS mobs are not like the Egyptian mob that raped Lara Logan…

So one hand I have pity for her on the other hand I have to let go of the judgement of “What’d you expect, dummy” and hope she gets gets some real compassion as her eyes were opened to the evil within humanity. Her Garden of Eden was shattered that day and she needs a savior. I fear though that many more will suffer before the media has to acknowledge the OWS’s warts and thus humanity’s need for laws and religion. Our founding Father’s said that only a moral and religious people can have our type of Government. Where in anarchy do you find such people?

They do not want the police involved so they will find out about how hard it is to govern a free humanity. With no laws, from whence will the justice come? With no authority, from whence will the peace and safety come? With no lawyers how will they settle disputes? An Ombudsman? How does one become this Ombudsman, one with social power…

Spartacus

With respect to individual crimes committed within the various protests, I fully agree that adults must be free to put themselves into unwise and hazardous situations if they so choose.

But in the case of Zucotti Park, I recall the owners of the park asking everyone to leave several weeks ago, which should have settled the matter. Now, maybe Mr. Bloomberg talked them out of filing an official complaint, or something, so maybe the NYPD wasn’t technically required to clear them out — whatever — but whether the property owners are being ignored or have been “persuaded” to put up with it, the spirit of the law and respect for private property have been shredded. I suspect there are other Occupied locations with similar permission, permitting, and other municipal ordinance issues, and I wish we still got hung up on silly little things like that.

As a side note, the question in the title of the post smacked me in the face when I saw it, and my reaction was, “D***, that’s a really good question!” And I realized that I have so given up any hope of logical behavior from the Left that I have lost the capacity to notice their illiogic, so it is always refreshing to read the thinking of someone who still has that capacity.

suek

Two comments:

It’s my understanding that not only are these crimes not being reported to the police (which might then warrant action on the part of the police), but within the camps, there’s pressure to keep silent about them. That tells me that even if the police arrested the perpetrators, they might not have witnesses willing to testify which makes the case unprosecutable.

1Thessalonians3:10For even when we were with you, we used to give you this order: if anyone is not willing to work, then he is not to eat, either.For we hear that some among you are leading an undisciplined life, doing no work at all, but acting like busybodies.Now such persons we command and exhort in the Lord Jesus Christ to work in quiet fashion and eat their own bread.But as for you, brethren, do not grow weary of doing good.
If anyone does not obey our instruction in this letter, take special note of that person and do not associate with him, so that he will be put to shame. Yet do not regard him as an enemy, but admonish him as a brother. ”
Notice it says will not work as opposed to cannot work.

11B40

Greetings:

I’m still serving my deportation to the San Francisco Bay area. One of the socio-political aspects that never fails to strike a negative cord with me is the ability of the local political class to sacrifice the rights of citizens to freely travel and do their commerce to the rights of protesters who disrupt those functions. Disruptions occur, perhaps a couple of handfuls of miscreants will be arrested, but, whatever punishment is leveled, it does not seem to alter the behavior of the protesters the next time their nasty panties go knotty. There comes a point where I am left to conclude that there is some kind of collusion going on in these situations.

I don’t believe that the right to demonstrate includes the right to disrupt the activities of one’s fellow citizens intentionally. Like the proverbial left hook that must stop before the beginning of my fine nose, there are very clear indicators where that point is. That demonstrators consistently exceed that limitation indicates to me that our police forces are not being used with a high or even useful degree of effectiveness. Why there is such a gross difference between the TEA Party demonstrations and those of the opposite end of our political spectrum establishes in my mind pretty clearly that “all demonstrators are equal; some demonstrators are more equal.” This seems to my non-legally trained mind to be the essence of civil rights discrimination. The overt support given to the demonstrators by public officials who are responsible for the protection of the rights of non or legal demonstrators certainly smacks of some degree of “Jim Crow” to me.

Now, as to your actual post, back in my college days, I took a minor in Economics so, as my Big Sister put it, I might learn how to make a buck or two. The most interesting of the courses I took in that regard was “Urban Economics”. The course was given in the Bronx, the land of my birth, and large swaths of which were then being put to the torch by some barbarian or other, and was taught by a professor who was an admitted Marxist (they admitted those things in those days) and a great educator. One of his lectures address the subject of “Why Slums Spread”. As I understood it, the nicest part of the slum is the periphery where there is some degree of relatively easy access to non or less slum areas. Thus, and inexorably, human nature requires that slums spread.

When our public officials decide, for whatever reason to placate illegal conduct, they are providing a seed-bed for a slum to take root and eventually spread. Just as human nature resulted in the “white flight” from the Bronx of my youth, collusion with illegal demonstrations will result in avoidance behaviors that will effect non-participatory citizens and organizations whose interests continue to be sacrificed on the altar of a misguided ideology.

I’m pretty sure if I broke all four of their limbs, the protesters might have to rethink their logistics for protesting.

SADIE

Of course, they leave – if you consider leaving, leaving your senses and blacking out because you’re too stoned to remember.

“It is far from the butterflies and Bambis that the media is trying to portray,” he told us. He described sexual assault as being a particular problem, partly because of drug use at the site:

There are many incidents of sexual touching and groping that goes unreported to us, mainly because the alleged victim is either too stoned or high to properly ID them or they “don’t want to get the guy in trouble.” One girl, with hickeys all over her neck was brought to us and claimed she was raped…She said she had gotten high and had sex with one guy then sex with the other guy, but when guy #3 tried, she rebuffed him. She later got stoned somewhere else and returned to her place where guy #3 came back and had sex with her (she thinks) but she remembers blacking out and him leaving and her pants off.

“Oakland Police responded to a late night call that protesters had broken into and occupied a downtown building and set several simultaneous fires,” the statement read. “The protesters began hurling rocks, explosives, bottles, and flaming objects at responding officers. Several private and municipal buildings sustained heavy vandalism.”

Yes, the “Occupy <name>” movement is just like the Tea Party movement. I remember all those Tea Party folk raping and masturbating and defecating on police cars… and setting fires in buildings, and throwing rocks, bottles, explosives at police officers. Yes, the two movements are THE SAME!